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Testing, Testing – is the Arista Working?

Our engineers have been busy testing a new Arista 400Gbps switch with the preliminary results looking promising. If testing is successful, this new switch may be installed into our NSW-IX ring to increase capacity, and eventually make its way to our other IXes. Last month, you would have read about our 800Gbps milestone, and with traffic continuing to see steady growth rates across the network, we need a 400Gbps switch that provides flexibility and choice for large scale cloud, routing transformation, and hyperscale IO intensive applications. 

Inaugural Systers Program – A Massive hit!

The IAASysters@AusNOG program finally took place! After being postponed twice last year, we were relieved that it happened in line with AusNOG this year as planned. The workshop was a full day of career planning, presentation and technical skills training delivered by prominent industry professionals. The vibe in the room was incredible, with participants actively engaging in all sessions and getting to know each other.   

The feedback from attendees has been excellent, with one participant reporting they took what they learned in the workshop and at the networking opportunities that came from AusNOG, they made new contacts and practised pitching themselves to strangers!   

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors once again. Thank you, AusNOG, Vocus and Amazon Web Services, for your contributions to this fantastic program and supporting our efforts in supporting women in the Internet industry. If you are interested in opportunities to sponsor this program or would like to nominate a participant, please email events@internet.asn.au for more information. We are currently evaluating the program and considering future options. 

Public Policy Advisory Panel Meeting

The newly formed IAA Public Policy Advisory Panel (PPAP) had its first meeting on 14 April 2022. After an initial round robin, the panel began road-mapping future goals and plans for IAA’s advocacy team, discussed IAA’s draft Public Policy Principles and 2022 Election Wish List, and outlined upcoming consultations IAA will be involved in. It was a great opportunity to meet the panel members, and the IAA advocacy team greatly benefited from the panel’s insights coming from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.  

The IAA Public Policy Principles are a set of guiding principles that reflect IAA’s values and will shape the work and responses of IAA’s advocacy team. The 2022 Election Wish List will be taken to political representatives in the lead up to the upcoming federal election to share our thoughts on the issues that permeate the sector. Both documents have been revised following the meeting and are awaiting the board’s approval.  

The Advisory Panel will meet quarterly and discuss issues facing our members and the internet sector of Australia more broadly and will assist IAA’s advocacy work in the sector. We look forward to continuing to work with the Advisory Panel and once again express our gratitude for their time and effort. 

The Network Hits 800G

Well, it’s happened, our network hit a whopping 800G during the month of March – twice! During the past six months, we’ve come very close and as we continue to seek more content providers to join the network, it won’t be long, before we will be at the next milestone of 900G. 

APNIC Academy – Keeping Your Technical Skills up to Date

If you’ve been looking for resources designed by industry experts to help you upskill or maintain skill currency, then you should check out APNIC’s Academy! With so many resources to choose from including virtual labs, workshops, live webinars, online courses and more, this educational platform is designed to help individuals in our industry acquire new skills and knowledge. These resources cover a huge range of topics, and we encourage you to explore the Academy to see if any are of interest to you. If there is something that you would like to learn more about, but can’t find it there, please get in touch with us at admin@internet.asn.au, and we will do our best to assist.  

Out of Band Network Project Update

Work continues on the OoB project with SA-IX deployment taking place next week; WA-IX and ACT-IX are soon to follow. NSW-IX and VIC-IX are up and running with great results and arrangements are being made for the QLD-IX deployment, amongst other things that we can’t announce just yet – so stay tuned!   

The Next IX – A Quick Update

Thank you to all the members who completed our member survey last month; your feedback is very valuable and will help determine where the next IX or PoP will go. We have collated the feedback and the Board is currently reviewing it. As this analysis progresses, we will keep you informed, so keep an eye out for updates in future newsletters and our social media posts. As you can well understand, some of these locations are difficult to service with some of the most expensive backhaul around. It may be we need to make compromises on our level of redundancy or capacity, but rest assured we will ensure the best possible standards are maintained. 

Welcome, Sabrina!

Sabrina Chang-Rozario joined our Admin Team earlier this month as our new Administrative Assistant. She will be assisting the Admin Team with various tasks including event organisation and has taken over our wonderful Tanzia’s role as the Executive Assistant to Narelle. Coming to us with over 15 years of international not-for-profit experience in stakeholder relations, program and event management, and relationship building, she is already an asset to our team.   

In her spare time, Sabrina enjoys Pilates and yoga, dabbling in photography, reading the classics to her children and travelling – Covid dependent at the moment, unfortunately!   

Parliament Hears About our Member Concerns

On Wednesday 16th March, Narelle and Sophia represented our association at the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security hearing that comprised several panels of stakeholders affected by the proposed bill. This hearing allowed industry representatives to provide feedback and raise concerns about the proposed federal government’s critical infrastructure cybersecurity obligations. This includes laws that could require organisations to install third-party software to gather information from their systems in the name of national security and report them to the government when the government deems them technically incapable of providing such systems information.  

During the hearing, Narelle did a fantastic job representing member interests. She explained that technical systems go through a number of upgrades and revisions and that capabilities change, meaning that any requirement to install software on behalf of Home Affairs needs careful and ongoing security and interoperability testing. She further raised the concern that the legislation is unclear, very complex and very difficult to work through and raised a number of specific concerns about the data this software could capture. She expressed that we need to trust in the type of software that goes onto our systems and that we must be able to read the code, assess the code, test the code, and check interoperability and security before it is installed and at any time it is installed.   

The hearing was an excellent opportunity to hear the different perspectives of various stakeholders. We hope the Parliamentary Joint Committee was able to gain enough industry insight for its review so that the inquiry can assist in constructing a Bill that is measured, effective and will improve our national security. If you would like to know more about the contents of the hearing, the transcript is available for download. So far, it seems the PJCIS has taken some of our views on board, so we live in hope the legislation will improve.